In LN, the framework is entirely different. It instead follows the narrator's deathbed confession to a Catholic priest, who dictates

To read the LN framework, go to the blog post here.

In LN: As in the beginning, the concluding text of the short story is radically different. In LN, the story concludes with the narrator stating he doesn't know if Priscilla is still alive and that though some may feel he ought to be hanged, he will die "a penitent sinner."

To read the LN framework, go to the blog post here.

In LN: text not present

In LN: text not present

In LN: another dash is added

In LN: "last"

In LN: text not present

In LN: Priscilla's letter begins a new paragraph

In LN: In accordance with the altered framework, "The letter has been long since burnt. I wish I could have forgotten it as well. It sticks to my memory. If I die with my senses about me, Priscilla’s letter will be my last recollection on earth."

In LN: "a few days"

In LN: a comma after "married"

In LN: a dash

In LN: "SIR"

In LN: "next"

In LN: "supposing she was the person who had snatched it out of the engraver’s hands, and might have been afterward used by the thief to commit the murder."

In LN: "I told him I was a policeman, and summoned him to assist me in the discovery of a crime. I even offered him money."

In LN: text not present

In LN: A sentence prior to this phrase: "'It all comes back to me, sir.'" Further changes include the absence of "'And, oh Lord,'" and instead states, "'A person in a state of frenzy'"

In LN: "dismal"

In LN: "flash of life"

In LN: text not present

In LN: a semi-colon

In LN: "'not so good as it was,’"

In LN: "and a little rest,"

In LN: a dash

In LN: "'I abstain from reading, in the interests of my occupation.’" Final question mark in The York Herald likely a mistake.

In LN: comma not present

In LN: comma not present

In LN: text not present

In LN: Prior to this paragraph are two others with the following text:

"I put my lips to the old fellow’s ear-trumpet, and asked who Mr. Scorrier was.

‘Brother-in-law to Mr. Wycomb. Mr. Wycomb’s dead. If you want to buy the business apply to Mr. Scorrier.’"

This sentence is further changed thus: "Receiving that reply, I went upstairs, and found Mr. Scorrier engaged in engraving a brass door-plate."

In LN: a colon after "said"

In LN: "For the first time, it occurred to me that we had forgotten an obstacle in our way, when we distributed our photographs of the knife. We had none of us remembered that a certain proportion of cutlers might be placed, by circumstances, out of our reach"

In LN: James Wycomb, Culter, etc.

In LN: "I looked at the time-table."

In LN: "pour"

In LN: Included prior to this phrase is the following text: "Supporting herself by her needle, while she was still unprovided with a situation,"

In LN: "at the big town of Waterbank." "Gravesend" is consistently replaced with "Waterbank."

In LN: "Higham" is consistently replaced with "Yateland"

In LN: text not present

In LN: text not present

In LN: "night-duty"

In LN: text not present

In LN: text not present

In LN: "but with Priscilla's help, I steadily advanced toward the end I had in view."

In LN: text not present

In LN: This section is quite different. The text is as follows:

"After reading those words, I could safely ask Priscilla to help me in reopening the mysterious murder case to some good purpose.

My notion was that the proceedings of the persons in Mrs. Crosscapel’s house, had not been closely enough inquired into yet. By way of continuing the investigation, I asked Priscilla if she could tell me anything which associated the housemaid with Mr. Deluc. She was unwilling to answer. ‘I may be casting suspicion on an innocent person,’ she said. ‘Besides, I was for so short a time the housemaid’s fellow servant——’"

In LN: A paragraph break after "(Signed)"

In LN: "on"

In LN: This paragraph is replace with two. See text below:

"With the best intentions, Miss Mybus found no opportunity of helping me. Of the two, Priscilla Thurlby seemed more likely to be of use.

In the first place, she was sharp and active, and (not having succeeded in getting another situation as yet) was mistress of her own movements."

In LN: These paragraphs are rewritten, absent, or edited and place elsewhere in the text. In LN, the following text is present prior to the recommendation:

"In the second place, she was a woman I could trust. Before she left home to try domestic service in London, the parson of her native parish gave her a written testimonial, of which I append a copy. Thus it ran:"

In LN: Replaced with the following text: "'I can call to mind two cases of persons found murdered in London—and the assassins have never been traced.'"

In LN: "'a person'"

In LN: "‘Just look back for a year or two.'"

In LN: text not present

In LN: text not present

In LN: Prior to "Miss Mybus" the following text is present: "Mentioning the lady first,"

In LN: "told my story"

This variant is in accordance with the changes in the narrative frame.

In LN: "police-force"

In LN: "on entering into her own recognisance to appear again if called upon."

In LN: "and to explain its interrupted inscription"

In LN: no comma present

In LN: "Inspector"

In LN: "may"

In LN: dash not present

In LN: "Did she afterward lock the door herself?"

In LN: dash not present

In LN: "reverend"

In LN: commas around this phrase

In LN: "The police made no discoveries that supported her first frantic accusation of herself."

In LN: This sentence is absent and instead includes the following text: "She had seen the dead body of her husband, murdered while she was unconsciously at his side—and she fainted, poor creature, at the bare remembrance of it."

The following sentence ("The proceedings...") occurs after a paragraph break.

In LN: "was pitch dark"

In LN: "fireside"

In LN: "his own wife"

In LN: no commas present

In LN: a comma after "inclined"

In LN: no comma; a dash after the quotation mark

In LN: dash not present

In LN: "heart's"

In LN: "embarkation"

In LN: "as a"

In LN: "lady's-maid"

In LN: a dash

In LN: "Inspector"

In LN: "they keys in both cases being left in my charge."

In LN: "poor"

In LN: "City"

In LN: "The Doctor had found it left in the body"

In LN: "While"

In LN: "guilty" is the end of the sentence. And "and" is struck, thus making it: "she was guilty. I even said"

In LN: "HE lay in bed on his back as the Doctor had described him."

In LN: a comma after "mind"

In LN: "'don't ask me what we saw; the Doctor has told you about it already.'"

In LN: "those"

In LN: a space present between "his" and "door." Likely a mistake by The York Herald.

In LN: A quotation mark after the comma. Likely a mistake by The York Herald.

In LN: text not present

In LN: "downstairs to her fellow-servant"

In LN: no comma present

In LN: a period

In LN: a semicolon connects the sentences. "On" thus becomes "on"

In LN: "rolled up perpendicularly in the bed"

In LN: a colon

In LN: "joined us while we were talking."

In LN: "The staton"

In LN: "'I found the man lying on his back, in bed, dead—with the knife that had killed him left sticking in the wound.'"

LN: "Doctor"

In LN: no comma present

In LN: a dash

In LN: a dash

In LN: "Miss"

In LN: a period

In LN: "Lehigh Street"

All instances of Lefroy-street are changed to "Leigh Street" in LN.

In LN: "You"

In LN: "him (as I supposed) that"

In LN: "Varley" is consistently changed to "Thurlby."

In LN: an exclamation mark. Likely a mistake in The York Herald.

LN: no comma

In LN: "see."[italicized]

LN employs single quotation marks for dialogue. I will not annotate each instance; the variance is consistent throughout.

In LN: "swinging-door"

In LN: "WHEN"

In LN: A FIRST WORD FOR MYSELF.

In the Chatto & Windus edition of Little Novels (1887), in which this story is included, the title is "Mr. Policeman and the Cook."

All further textual annotations will abbreviate this edition to LN.

While capital punishment in Britain did not cease until the 20th century, the last woman hanged was Frances Kidder in 1868. The same year saw the last public hanging in Britain.

Published in 1880, this story likely takes place decades prior, given the indication of the narrative format, making it possible that Priscilla could have indeed been subject to hanging.

From The Law and the Lady to The Woman in White, Collins’s career-long engagements with British law in his fiction conveys a complex ethical code. Heroes commit crimes as often as the villains. For more discussion on British law in Collins and its social and biographical context, see Pykett.

Bann: (n.) 1. An authoritative proclamation 2. A public proclamation or edict; a summons by public proclamation.

This story hints as Collins’s contemporary liberal views of sexuality and marriage. Suggestive of an illicit liaison (at least in terms of an officer engaging with a investigative subject), Collins reifies Victorian morality by engaging the two to be married but then disrupts that again by the revelation that Priscilla murdered Zebedee. The narrator’s love for the criminal Priscilla, however, may suggest a movement beyond Victorian social conventions. Collins’s work, as always, is morally complex. For more information on Collins’s own affairs, see the Peters biography in the further reading tab.

Collins’s innovations in detective fiction, a mode of literature to which he contributed significantly, crucially includes his use of the amateur female sleuth. While Marian Halcombe of The Woman in White is credited as the prototypical female detective, characters like Priscilla and Anne Rodway (“The Diary of Anne Rodway”) illustrate Collins’s interest in these figures. Given more agency than their traditional female counterparts, Collins’s sleuths straddle the line between criminality and justice. See Kestner in the further reading tab for more discussion of Collins and female detectives in the nineteenth century.

Now commonly published as “Who Killed Zebedee?” this short story is also reprinted and was published with syndication-upon-release as “Mr. Policeman and the Cook.”

British police began employing photography in their investigations and organization in the mid-nineteenth century. Photography itself was invented in the 1820s, though wasn’t available to the public until several decades later.

To make love: (v.) to pay amorous attention to; to court, woo.

Gothic and sensational literature presents gendered abuse variety of manners, but Collins’s work often frames unwanted sexual advances and sexual assault as villainous. There is a myriad of scholarship on Collins’s engagement with gender and sexuality, including works by Haefele-Thomas, Heller, O’Neill, and Pykett. See citations in the further reading tab.

Chimney-piece: 1. (n.) a picture, piece of sculpture, or of tapestry, placed as an ornament over a fireplace. 2. (n.) an ornamental structure, usually of stone or marble, with moulding, carving, etc. over and around the open recess of a fireplace.

Britain began its colonial conquest of Australia in 1788. Its early history functioned as a pseudo penal colony, but by the mid-late nineteenth century, its colonial expansion during the gold rush in the 1850s influenced its development into a settler colony.

Footman: (n.) an attendant or foot servant; spec. one employed to run ahead or alongside a coach, carriage, or (in early use) a rider of rank.

Surgeon: (n.) in this sense, a general practitioner.

Medicine and its abuse features in several of Collins’ works, as well as throughout sensational and Gothic literature. As in the case here, it often carries a gendered connotation. See Talairach for more discussion on medicine in Collins in the further reading tab.

Goggle: (adj.), of the eye: protuberant, prominent, full and rolling

A yellow complexion, while certainly a racialization, does not denote a specific race. Collins also uses yellow to describe the Italian Count Fosco in The Woman in White. More likely, it is a signifier of foreignness, perhaps from a warm climate.

Anxieties and interest in mesmerism (also known as animal magnetism) and hypnotism compounded in the nineteenth century, featuring in sensational novels and occult media. Here, as in many cultural instances, a woman is (or believes she is) subject to its influence. While Mrs. Zebedee has a history of sleepwalking, her book “The World of Sleep” suggests an ambiguous influence suspiciously similar to mesmerism. For further discussion of Collins and gender and mesmerism, see Pearl in the further reading tab.

Martinique, an island in the West Indies, was colonized in the 17th century and remains a French region today.

Linguistic. Creole: 1. (n.) a descendant of white European settlers (esp. Spanish or French) who is born in a colonized country 2. (n.) Any person of mixed ancestry born in a country previously colonized by white Europeans.

Interpretive Deluc could be a white Creole or mixed race, according to 19th century racial conventions.

The tobacco industry in the nineteenth century was a major part of international trade and imperial capitalism. Cigars, at this point in history, were more widely smoked than cigarettes.

Madness (or the lack thereof) is a crucial component to many of Collins’s sensational works both as characterization and plot device, perhaps most prominently in The Woman in White. For further discussion on mental illness and gender in Collins, see Heller in the further reading tab.

Sleepwalking also features heavily in The Moonstone (1868) during the climatic revelation of the moonstone’s thief. For further discussion on somnambulism in Collins, see Ayoub in the further reading tab.

Though Priscilla is deemed sober, the influence of drugs and alcohol are prevalent throughout Collins’s oeuvre. Collins himself suffered from opium addiction. Addiction is showcased in Armadale (1866) and The Moonstone (1868). See Peters for biographical information on Collins’s addiction.

The London Police formed in 1839 in the City of London.